51–60 of 99 posts
I wish there were some super cheap sparse data plans that worked out in the middle of nowhere USA. Everything out there want 10K units for get good discounts.
For contrast. In the UK 3G has another 12 years ahead of it [0] Not everyone uses a smartphone with the constant consumer churn. I've had a good quality Nokia "dumb" phone for 10 years and have no reason to buy a new one, I need a new £10 battery soon and then it will keep going for another ten years in this country. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59583783
"Assembly Research founder Matthew Howett told BBC News the change would probably come sooner than the government's 2033 deadline."
"BT revealed plans to phase out 3G by 2023, and 2G later in the decade."Newer phone networks are much more efficient than old ones. For a certain amount of 3G spectrum the carrier can serve more customers at higher data rates with 4G or 5G. From their viewpoint it is expensive to keep serving 3G customers.
Ironically 2g will still be around forever as a fallback and so much industrisl equipment relies on it At least thats what uk operators told me
As others have pointed out, 2G GSM uses less spectrum (not for the same usage, but as a base) with 0.2MHz channels rather than 5MHz channels. There's been some stuff talking about T-Mobile running GSM inside the guard bands of their LTE network (dead space between channels). Still, it seems like they're also going to be shutting it down.
T-Mobile's GSM network is pretty limited with maybe a third of the coverage of their LTE and 5G networks. It doesn't use any low-band spectrum so it performs pretty poorly. They also haven't been expanding it over the past 7 years or so, preferring to put their effort into LTE and now 5G.
They did keep GSM alive a lot longer than AT&T (6 years longer), but it seems like the reasons for keeping it alive are dwindling compared to the cost.
A lot of people in car forums are super upset about this and angry with their specific automaker. But of course, it is happening to all of them that haven't moved off of 3G. https://www.toyota.com/audio-multimedia/support/3g-faq/ https://lexus2.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/10537/~/... https://www.subaru.com/3g-network-retirement.html?SIE=9ad00c... Etc. https://autobala.com/how-3g-shutdown-in-2022-will-ruin-yo…
This reminds me of all the 90s luxury cars with analog cellular phones integrated into the center consoles quickly becoming useless in the 2000s. Except worse considering how much these systems are integrated into some cars.
Newer phone networks are much more efficient than old ones. For a certain amount of 3G spectrum the carrier can serve more customers at higher data rates with 4G or 5G. From their viewpoint it is expensive to keep serving 3G customers.
Yes. 4G can stuff 300% more data hertz for hertz bandwidth compared to 3G. But 5G only does about 15-20% more data hertz for hertz than 4G. It really is a very minor increase in speed. All advertisements about 5G speed are really advertising for limited availability 3.5 GHz and mm-wave deployments in new spectrum... but of course the telcos are now realizing this spectrum, even the half gigahertz they stole of C band…
At low-band, it's often quoted as 20%, but when you get to mid-band it's a lot more. That's one of the reasons there's been a mad-dash for mid-band spectrum.
I'd also note that the radio standards are made to evolve. LTE wasn't nearly as efficient as it was when it was introduced which is why, for a time, HSPA+ networks were able to compete with LTE.
> but of course the telcos are now realizing this spectrum, even the half gigahertz they stole of C band, doesn't actually propagate well around Earth instead of straight up and down
The propagation isn't really a surprise and the idea it was stolen is terribly biased. The incumbents on that spectrum were paid huge sums for it and moving expenses.
It does propagate well enough that it will be very meaningful. T-Mobile is seeing amazing gains using the 2.5GHz spectrum that they got through their merger with Sprint. They already cover around 60% of the US population with mid-band 5G. 3.5GHz won't propagate as well, but there are ways to overcome that like having the towers transmit at higher power and then having lower-frequency spectrum handle the uplink from the handset.
The three carriers didn't spend nearly $100B for something worthless and they aren't realizing its propagation as some sort of surprise.
> 2G and 3G standards have their place and keeping a 2 MHz channel open for them is not going to get in anyone's way, on the towers, or spectrum-wise
Running a 3G UMTS network requires 10MHz of spectrum. 10MHz of spectrum can be pretty meaningful. CDMA uses 2.5MHz for voice and 2.5MHz for data and maybe you're thinking of that, but it's still 5MHz to have both voice and data on a CDMA network.
Things can certainly be kept around, but it means less for other stuff.
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This reminds me of all the 90s luxury cars with analog cellular phones integrated into the center consoles quickly becoming useless in the 2000s. Except worse considering how much these systems are integrated into some cars.
Not to be dumb - but I don't want my car to have cellular connectivity, so this opens up more car purchase options for me once 3G goes dark. Granted, that's a tiny influx of new customers, but still, there's at least 1 new customer as result of their decision to still use 3G.
If I were in power and I genuinely cared about saving the planet, I'd figure out how to make cars without this auto-emergency-dial system more expensive to insure; that way, people would look at newer cars more favorabily, and I'd incentivize electric cars as well. But hey, luckily the car lobby is still pretty strong in the France and Germany!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few years back I got a handful of letters about getting my Nissan LEAF's radio updated from 2g to 3g. They wanted to charge me $200 USD for it. I didn't bother and it's ended up resulting in very little change for me - Mostly features I didn't really use. It's nice to know what just a few years later I'd be facing the same problem again.
I've been told that on my Subaru, if I subscribe to the services that need it, they will do the upgrade for free. But if I don't subscribe, they won't do it at all. I'm fine with that, I am unreasonably against subscriptions, lol.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to be dumb - but I don't want my car to have cellular connectivity, so this opens up more car purchase options for me once 3G goes dark. Granted, that's a tiny influx of new customers, but still, there's at least 1 new customer as result of their decision to still use 3G.
In the EU new cars now are mandated to have an automatic way to call the emergency services after a crash, I wonder if the governments have a clause about what would happen if 3G is turned off (I guess they're not planning to do that for a while yet). If I were in power and I genuinely cared about saving the planet, I'd figure out how to make cars without this auto-emergency-dial system more expensive to insure; that…
Is there any way to fix my old 3G phone to continue to work under 5G?
I wish. My iPhone is affected by this (or so Sprint tells me) and I'm holding off as long as I can. I'm seriously considering one of these: https://www.sprint.com/en/shop/cell-phones/sonim-xp3-plus-no... I won't buy an Android because I don't trust Google, and I'm just tired of Apple's poor quality lately.
I worked very very briefly in the wireless service industry on UAPs and large scale cell antenna receivers. To me, this doesn't seem as much a conspiracy to obsolete old phones as a practical stance to not need to have two copies of antennas on every tower. The old antennas used in 3G don't go up to the frequencies needed by true 5G, so they need new ones. If they're developing new ones, they don't want to have to ke…
> As a side effect, anyone still using a 3G device needs to buy a new one, but I don't think that is the main driver for the move. Despite the positives, this feels kind of sad. If you look at software, many of the older browsers out there can't even open simple modern webpages. After years, i grow weary of the churn, i've gone from Windows 98 to Windows 10 now, through numerous versions of Debian/Ubuntu and CentOS/F…
I think "security" is used as a crutch and an excuse too much.
As a retro hardware enthusiast, very often the hardware isn't insecure. It's just that someone somewhere got lazy or greedy or both and decided to do something that makes the hardware not work right anymore. Things like billion-dollar game companies that shut down servers that cost them all of $5,000 a year to run. It's less than is spent on a single coffee maker, but the company decides to cut off all of its existing customers because they only number in the hundreds, not the millions.
As to "security" — Keeping financial records on a 1982 TRS-80 is far more secure than keeping them on any modern laptop.